The Shifter's Melody
by The Blister Pearl Lady
Summary: Harry Potter is given more stress at a young age than most children would be able to handle. In one universe, he can't handle it. But the story isn't over. Fem Harry. AU.
1. The Shifter's Changes

Chapter One: The Shifter's Changes

Last Hours of Halloween

A pause. The wand pointed carefully at Harry Potter's head from the shadows of the black cloak. Only two figures standing, staring at one another. Baby Harry was crying from his cot.

"… Avada Kedavra!"

The jet of green light hit Harry Potter's forehead and bounced off of it in a great explosion of power.

His forehead bleeding and his one year old body having just forcibly ejected a killing curse, Harry Potter started screaming wails, falling over in his cot. In a great explosion of green light and fire that quickly and magically went out, Voldemort's body disintegrated and a heap of cloaks fell to the floor.

But Voldemort's soul - Voldemort's soul ran somewhere else. Already broken and fragmented, it unknowingly and accidentally left a piece of itself behind. The piece floated around the room - and landed in the forehead scar of one Harry James Potter.

Harry's scar burned and he started screaming louder. Suddenly, all around him and his cot was nothing but charred cottage, a heap of black cloak, and dead bodies.

But Harry's body was changing - a great and painful tingling, then a kind of bubbling, rushing through his skin. Even as his forehead burned, the moment the curse had made contact - one year old Harry's body had begun contorting and shifting.

Changing. Changing. Alone amid a haze of smoke and the smell of death.

* * *

Hagrid and Sirius charged through the rubble searching for the source of the infant wailing. "Harry! Harry!" Hagrid called.

Sirius stopped dead as he saw James Potter's body lying spread-eagled on the front entryway floor. He put a hand to his mouth, his legs shaking, but only a choke came out.

Hagrid charged forward in search of the crying baby. He sprinted up the stairs in great, thundering shakes - saw Lily Potter and stopped.

Then, tears in his sad eyes, Hagrid leaned over and quietly closed her open, glassy green eyes where she had been lying protectively before her son's cot.

Hagrid went over to the cot to lift Harry up - and then paused.

He saw the forehead scar. But that wasn't what stopped him.

* * *

"Sirius!"

Sirius was standing outside the cottage in the night air, trembling hand over his eyes, his face working between grief and rage. But he looked around quickly when Hagrid ran up in the darkened village street with the form of his godson.

"Is he all right?" Sirius asked quickly.

"Well… alive and healthy… curse scar on the forehead where the curse rebounded and hit You-Know-Who…"

"And?" Sirius asked impatiently.

"… Look," said Hagrid, leaning over to show the baby in his arms.

"He… he looks almost…" Sirius's eyes widened.

"Like a girl?" said Hagrid.

Harry Potter no longer had the face of a little boy, but of a little girl. Something about the shaping and the eyes was different, even the body structure was slightly off.

"Are we sure it's him?" Sirius barked. "That those people haven't taken my godson somewhere? That this supposed defeat isn't all a trick?"

"Oh, check the eyes. Lily's bright green eyes, the same distinctive almond shape. And James's black hair. That's him," Hagrid confirmed, looking pale, frightened, and uncertain. "I -" Hagrid looked around in reflexive embarrassment. "I had to check," he whispered. "It's Harry. But he's definitely… a she. So she did used to be… a he?" Even Hagrid looked confused by what he was saying.

"… Yes," said Sirius slowly, after a slight pause deciphering the words. "I… I remember hearing about this growing up. There are certain witches and wizards whose magic, if they're very young children and they go through enormous stress… their magic sometimes changes their sex." Sirius swallowed. "Permanently," he admitted, looking down at what was now his goddaughter. "Everything - face and body structure, child-making ability, neurology and mind and… everything.

" _Everything_ changes," Sirius emphasized, now pale himself. "Otherwise… they remain the same person. People call them Shifters."

"And you think… the attack…?" Hagrid realized. "I mean, it fits. It is stress. And she was only a year old, poor thing."

"… Take him - _her_ \- to Dumbledore," Sirius decided. "Take my motorbike. I won't need it at this point anyway." He nodded to the floating motorbike on the darkened village street. Icy determination came over his features. "I have something else I have to do."

* * *

One Day Later - Evening of November 1st

When Hagrid landed the flying motorbike down in the silent and empty nighttime suburban Muggle street, he nearly tripped and knocked the motorbike over rushing off of it. "Professor Dumbledore! Professor Dumbledore!"

Dumbledore and McGonagall, the only two on the street, rushed over to quiet him.

"Hush, Hagrid!" said Professor McGonagall sternly. "No one is supposed to know we're here. This is Muggle territory, you'll wake the whole street up."

"But Professor -!" said Hagrid urgently.

"What is it, Hagrid? What happened?" Dumbledore asked, quietly but seriously.

"Everything is as you said, sir - Sirius even lent me his motorbike - except… We had to come to you, sir. Harry - he was a Shifter.

"Harry Potter isn't Harry Potter anymore, sir."

Hagrid leaned the bundle of blankets over to reveal a baby girl instead of a baby boy. The lightning bolt curse scar shone clear on her forehead.

"He survived the attack just the way you said, sir," said Hagrid, his face concerned. "But… the stress was too much, too young… and he's not Harry anymore. Now he's a girl…"

Hagrid trailed off uncertainly. Professor McGonagall had gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

Dumbledore took Harry in his arms, his face very grave. "… This changes everything," he said.

"Why, sir?" Hagrid asked.

"Well," said Dumbledore, "first, because the wizarding community has to know, and they're going to want to see her again. Which means we can't leave her here with her non-magical relatives - at least, not yet.

"Second… because the Prophecy specifically referred to a boy." Dumbledore looked up, deep in thought. "Which means the Prophecy no longer applies. No matter how much _he_ may continue to act like it does… not having heard the whole thing…"

Dumbledore looked forward unseeingly, cogs turning in his head, eyes working.

"It's almost like… this wasn't supposed to happen," he whispered to himself.

"Sir?" Hagrid and McGonagall both looked mystified. Neither of them had any idea what Dumbledore was talking about when he mentioned a mysterious man or a Prophecy.

"… We have to take her to the Ministry of Magic," said Dumbledore with deadly seriousness, straightening. "Now! I'll Side-Along Apparate with her. Minerva, you take Hagrid. They'll want to question him closely."

"Of course," said McGonagall stoically. Hagrid grabbed the motorbike, McGonagall grabbed Hagrid, Dumbledore had the baby girl in his arms. McGonagall and Dumbledore both turned with a swish of cloaks -

And in a second, everything was gone. Like nothing had ever been on that quiet Muggle suburban street at all. A slight breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky.

Harry Potter had not been left there. The first divergence had been set.

The doorstep of number four was empty.

* * *

In a great, echoing courtroom in the Ministry of Magic, a very select few council members sat around the great tiers looking down at the checkered marble center of the floor. All of the chairs in the courtroom carried a forbidding black abode, the marble grey.

Dumbledore stood concerned behind Sybil Trelawney, a tiny woman with bug-eyed bejeweled glasses in endless shawls and bangles. She trembled as the council members all shouted questions at her.

"You prophecy a boy and now she's a girl! What is the meaning of this?!"

"What did the Prophecy that You-Know-Who was acting on say?!"

"I - I don't know, I don't remember -!" Trelawney begged in a trembling voice.

"You don't remember your own Predictions?!"

"The part of Sybil Trelawney that is a harsh and talented Seer is repressed deep inside of herself!" Dumbledore boomed. "They are two different people! She cannot consciously access this person! By day, she is just an airy and eccentric tea leaf and tarot card reader -!"

"You're telling me," said one councilor disbelievingly, "that the fate of the wizarding world has been left in the hands of a hack Seer with multiple personality disorder -?!"

But suddenly everything in the room halted. It looked almost as if Trelawney were having a seizure. Her eyes rolled, her mouth sagged, she shook.

"… She's coming," said Dumbledore, eyes sharp, backing up. "The Seer. This… is completely unscripted. Not even I know what's coming next."

And then something happened that never had before. The eyes stopped rolling - and a harsh and stoical woman, nothing like the timid big-eyed girl of before, took Sybil Trelawney's place. Her eyes turned forward. A silent snarl came over her features.

If a quill had dropped, anyone would have heard it.

Then Sybil Trelawney turned and fled the courtroom.

"Stop her! Stop her!" Wands came out - jets of light were flown at Sybil Trelawney -

But she was already long gone.

Outside the courtroom doors, she grabbed the infant out of a startled McGonagall's hands and sprinted away with her. "Wait! Stop!" McGonagall called, taking out her own wand.

Sybil turned a corner and was gone.

* * *

"I can sense her! She's in the deepest recesses of the Department of Mysteries!" Dumbledore barked as he and the others sprinted after Sybil Trelawney.

"How did she even get in there, with all the protections?" one councilor asked in disbelief.

"She probably saw her obstacles ahead of time. This woman is a Seer. She can do anything she wants," said Dumbledore flatly. "And she's changing the timeline again…"

He cursed, and everyone sprinted after Sybil.

* * *

They found her inside the hall of time and stopped.

Great golden hourglasses filled with strange, magical gold mist of all shapes and sizes filled the time hall. Everyone was refracted in a million glittering lenses of glass.

Sybil had knelt - and had the baby tucked deep inside a massive hourglass. It was broken, and the baby girl was burrowed deep in its magical gold mist.

Dumbledore got there first. He saw the baby girl's lightning bolt scar glowing weirdly crimson - and he stopped, his eyes widening.

He snatched the baby out of the golden mist, but the glowing was already gone. He put his hand over the scar. "… It's still in there," he realized quietly to himself in confusion.

The Horcrux was still in the scar. So what had changed?

The councilors had reached and apprehended Sybil Trelawney - her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed into unconsciousness amid the broken time hourglass. Her body sprawled out around the shards of glass and broken mist. Everyone crowded her -

Except for Dumbledore, holding the baby girl in his arms.

* * *

Woole's Orphanage, London

One of the maids opened the front door - and stopped short. A tiny dark-haired baby boy sat on her doorstep.

"Well, you wouldn't be the first left here like this," she said sadly but matter of factly, kneeling down to his level. "You look about a year old. What's your name? Can you tell me?"

"… Tom… Riddle…" the little boy said, staring up at her with big dark eyes. "… Tom… Riddle…"

"Tom?" she mused. "Can you tell me anything about yourself?"

The boy just stared up at her, looking hopelessly lost.

"What is it?" The matron had come to the doorway - saw Tom and frowned.

The maid looked up from her place kneeling. "He says his name's Tom Riddle, ma'am. He looks about a year old and I just found him abandoned out here.

"He don't seem to remember anything except his name."

"… Well," said the matron squarely, "let's take him inside and have a look." She bustled back inside. The maid took up baby Tom and the door to the orphanage shut behind them.

* * *

Dumbledore's Office, Hogwarts

Dumbledore stared down in consternation at the new name on the long parchment roll list: Tom Riddle.

"Only appearing at a year old," he murmured. "A late bloomer… I hope.

"Voldemort's son. He has to be Voldemort's son.

"The alternative… that the time magic used the magical code from the girl's Horcrux to form an exact copy of Tom Riddle tied to her, full body and full soul and all… a clone of his younger self tied to the Potter girl… that's too horrifying to contemplate.

"It has to be his son.

"But if the Seer side of Sybil insists this was supposed to happen…"

Dumbledore continued frowning down at the sheet of parchment.

"He'll be in her year, too. The Malfoys just got off, and their son will be in the same year. I see two rival Slytherin gangs forming, against one Gryffindor girl and her group of friends. And Garrick Ollivander just wrote to tell me of the new wands made from Fawkes's third and fourth tail feather…"

The door burst open and Dumbledore whirled around, putting down the sheet of parchment on his desk.

"… What's wrong?" said McGonagall, stopping short at Dumbledore's expression.

Dumbledore smiled thinly. "A late bloomer," he said. "It appears Voldemort has an illegitimate son that carries his name. An orphan in the Muggle world, ironically like his father. He'll be in the Potter girl's and the Malfoy boy's year at Hogwarts."

McGonagall paled. "What do we do?" she wondered.

"Nothing," said Dumbledore crisply, stoical. "No matter how it happened, this boy hasn't actually done anything. He's a full human being with a soul and no back history, just like you and me. Hogwarts will eventually have to become accustomed, once more, to the name Tom Riddle," Dumbledore added cryptically, giving another long stare. "Let's hope the same things don't happen again…

"In any case, Minerva, what is it?" He looked up.

"Sybil Trelawney, sir. She has awakened at St Mungo's Hospital."

Dumbledore stiffened, looked up - and rushed out of the office past an uncertain Minerva McGonagall.

After a pause, she also walked over to stare down at the list on the desk.

* * *

When Dumbledore walked into the hospital room, Sybil Trelawney was sitting upright in the hospital bed, airy but oddly calm.

"Before you ask, Dumbledore," she said dryly, "they are ironically the _only_ thirty minutes I still don't remember. The Ministry has kindly decided not to press charges against a Seer who seems to be actively working against You-Know-Who's memory."

Dumbledore paused and looked her over cautiously. "Sybil, you seem… different," he admitted.

"My two sides have integrated - my conscious side and my Seer side. I do not have what they so colorfully called 'multiple personality disorder' in the courtroom any longer. I know a great many _true_ secrets about Seeing that I did not understand before…" Sybil gave a tiny, icy smile, her voice purposefully light and airy but her face behind the bejeweled, bug-eyed glasses strangely calm. "Stress changed me as much as it has changed the Potter girl.

"When I am better," she added, "they are going to make the decision for where she is placed as a child."

"I thought I was deciding that," said Dumbledore immediately.

"Oh, you will have some say as a Wizengamot council member, Dumbledore," said Sybil, smiling thinly. "Perhaps more than most.

"But the Ministry has now officially taken over. Ultimate decision placement resides with them."

Dumbledore's eyes widened as his face creased in something remarkably like panic.

Everything, it seemed, was falling out of his control. Albus Dumbledore was not having a good week.

He had left the hospital room - just rounded the corner - when three sets of footsteps came around the other corner and into Sybil Trelawney's room.

"Ah, excellent." She smirked at the three people from her white bed. "I gathered all four of us together today because we have one thing in common - a fascination with the Potter girl not only as a war hero, but as a Shifter. We were each going to separately offer the Ministry the chance to take her in.

"I have a proposal."

* * *

A great thunder. "This council is now in session!"

The same chattering council members were sitting around the courtroom. Dumbledore sat among them, looking around cautiously.

"We are here to decide the placement of the Potter girl as a child," said the head councillor, a square-jowled woman who was the current Minister for Magic. "We all know the media and the newspapers have been keeping very close tabs on this case, even given that they were never told about the failed Prophecy.

"So let's not give them too much to talk about," she added dryly, looking around. There were a few half-hearted chuckles. "With Sirius Black arrested for killing his friend after leaving his motorbike with Rubeus Hagrid, there is enough of that going around as it is.

"The Muggles have been investigated without their knowledge and found to be not an option. The Potter girl's last living relatives are not suitable. Sirius Black is now in Azkaban Prison. The Potters left no will. Other arrangements will have to be made."

"Protest -!" Dumbledore began.

"Overruled, Albus. With all due respect for what you have done for the war effort," said the Minister simply. "I have a letter here from an unexpected source:

"Nicolas Flamel, the famous alchemist and creator of the Philosopher's Stone. He wrote us from his chateaux in the countryside South."

Everyone sat forward in a great rushing of clothes, Dumbledore included.

"He and his French wife Perenelle agree to take in the Potter girl, as private alchemists with extreme wealth. They have one curious addition: the Seer Sybil Trelawney and the great wand maker Garrick Ollivander plan to move in with them. Ollivander would continue his wand shop. Sybil Trelawney would Floo back and forth to Hogwarts through Hogsmeade as a Divination professor with newfound abilities during the school-year.

"The girl would therefore have great wealth and no less than four powerful parents."

A great buzz of chatter erupted in the courtroom. Dumbledore sat there, his mind working -

"I support this whole-heartedly!" he said suddenly, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise. "If enough magical power is concentrated in one loving home, as I believe my friends will provide, it can equal protections around that home similar to those of blood protections. No one will be able to penetrate any abode that family inhabits."

"Paranoid, Dumbledore? The war is over," said the Minister, raising a curious eyebrow.

"Call it whatever you like," said Dumbledore, smiling thinly. "But these are the grounds under which I agree. I have one final request: I would like to shield this girl for as long as possible not only from the stresses surrounding child celebrity, but from any obscene arrogance it might produce.

"Therefore, I request that this girl - between the Flamel alchemical fortune and the Potter medicinal potion fortune - be kept a privately tutored recluse among her new family during her childhood.

"She will have plenty of space to spread out. The Potters own a rustic manor, and there is the Flamel southern chateaux. She will have everything she needs. She will be loved and supported by four people close to her. But I request that she be dissuaded from interacting with outer society until she safely arrives as an older and more set person under the protections of Hogwarts.

"I am already making a great concession," he added sharply, displeased, "so please consider it."

And with this, he sat back quietly.

An explosion of excited talking erupted in the courtroom. "Silence!" the Minister called. Another thundering crash. Slowly, silence fell. "We'll put it to a vote. All in favor of this new plan?"

Every single hand went up.

"Done! The Potter girl will be given formally over in adoption to these four adults: Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel, Sybil Trelawney, and Garrick Ollivander, all existing under the same home! Her Potter surname will be kept! The childhood recluse clause shall go through!

"This meeting is adjourned!"

* * *

Flamel Chateaux, Southern England

The four adults sat around the sitting room, discussing.

"She'll be here soon," said Perenelle, a delicate fragile and pale wisp of a thin old woman, with unusual warm enthusiasm breaking through her reserve.

"Yes, we will have her at last," said Nicolas brightly, beaming and putting his hand in Perenelle's. "Raising a child like this? How could we refuse?"

"I agree," said Garrick curiously. "I am _fascinated_. She'll need a new name…"

"And it will need to be baptized," said Sybil, airy but proud. "She will of course be raised the traditional wizarding Pagan Wiccan way - including gay and multi marriages."

"We will make a will leaving everything to her, on top of her Potter fortune," said Nicolas crisply, for a moment surprisingly serious. Then he smiled. "I cannot wait to meet her - show her theatre and the arts!"

"Take her on our favorite ancient magical places trips, show her alchemy," said Perenelle warmly, smiling dreamily. She had a French accent, smooth white hair, and a glass of wine in her quiet, graceful hand. Nicolas, on the other hand, just as ancient and delicate a wisp as she, was surprisingly bright, colorful, and cheerful.

Garrick Ollivander was a wide-eyed, wild-haired old man in shabby clothes, his eyes like pale moons. Sybil Trelawney, younger, still wore her bejeweled bug-eyed glasses, bangles, and shawls.

"I love Potions, Dream-healing, and star studies - in addition to Seeing. Dream-healing is a new field of study, an experimental one involving using Penseives to sell memories of soft words and sounds that trigger relaxing magical sensations. I will have to show her," said Sybil, pleased.

"I want to take her on my travels and adventures to find magical creature wand parts," said Ollivander eagerly. "And I must admit to a fascination with mind magic… It helps me with my wand matching…"

"Yes," he said, pleased. "This reclusive, famous, wealthy girl will know of a great many theoretical magical things."

"Now, for a name," said Perenelle, sitting forward. "Something romantic, I think. That is one thing this entire group can agree on.

"Delphine is an elegant French mermaid name. Elvina means 'elf-friend' and Faye means 'fairy'."

"Faye is too simple and confusing a meaning - we don't need people thinking she's part fairy. Elf-friend would be a rather controversial weight to be carrying around as a name," said Garrick. "And Delphine just reminds me of dolphin, not mermaid.

"I'm rather partial to the name Dariyah. It is a brave-sounding mermaid name meaning 'sea'," he said crisply. "Aine is the famous Irish Queen of the Fairies -"

"But she's not Irish," said Sybil. "What about Kaia? A mermaid name meaning 'the sea' or 'pure.' There's also Naida - it means 'water nymph'."

"And yet she is not a water nymph either," said Nicolas crisply, and everyone turned to look at him in surprise. "We are all coming up with such odd names. But we also keep coming back to ideas of mermaids and water.

"We know mermaid song is famous. What about a common mermaid-themed name that references that? Something not as out-there by English standards?

"What about the name Melody?"

"A tiny, pixie-like for her age, black-haired girl with bright green almond-shaped eyes named Melody Potter… A girl said to have wild curls growing around her head, filling out her thin face, with the name Melody… I like that," said Sybil approvingly. "It fits her new background, too."

"Melody is a wonderful name," Garrick admitted warmly.

"Hm. Then it is decided," said Perenelle, nodding approvingly. She smiled, half a smirk, her eyes flashing. "Melody Potter and her new life are here to stay.

"We might want to do Petunia Evans a basic courtesy and mail her a letter telling her of her late sister and her newfound niece. Since she won't be required to raise the child."

"A traditionalist Muggle?" Sybil grinned. "I'm sure she'll be just _delighted_ by the idea of a natural sex change and a coming witch for a niece…"

There were some unkind, mischievous snickers in the chateaux sitting room.

Suddenly, a knock came at the door. The four stood, rushed over into the entry hall, and threw the door wide open.

Dumbledore was standing there, holding the baby girl, frowning cautiously.

"Here she is…" he said slowly, handing her over. "She's yours now," he added softly but sternly. "Remember the rules."

"Of course," said Perenelle, taking the little girl adoringly in her white, paper-like, thin old arms. "We have just decided her name will be Melody - Melody Potter. We are baptizing her, in the Old Way."

Dumbledore smiled. "It is a lovely name," he admitted. "And I am almost certain that it will get into the papers very soon without you or I having to do anything," he added cheerfully.

"Now off to put her in her nursery…" Perenelle receded, reserved and odd, into the depths of the house. "It is a colorful wizarding Parisian theme, with a gold gauze canopy cot…"

"We have it from here, Albus," said Nicolas, and the door was shut on the turbulent first year and a half of Melody Potter's life - Nicolas, Sybil, and Garrick still standing mysteriously in the shadowy doorway of the chateaux.


	2. A Growing Witch

Chapter Two: A Growing Witch

 _Garrick Ollivander's Diary_

I am keeping a record of my daughter's early years, how she grows and changes as a person and a personality. My sole focus will be on who she is as an individual. How eager I am to see which individual wand chooses her!

This time I am writing at the time of her second birthday.

Melody is a tiny little thing, a little pixie-like creature with brilliant, bright green almond-shaped eyes. She has a thin face filled out by the wild, thick, shiny jet-black curls that grow all around her head. Her lightning bolt forehead scar is often hidden behind a fringe.

We keep her hair in long curls, and her clothes are all fanciful girl's clothes in brilliant, jewel-like Winter color shades with an occasional splash of snow-white or deep-black. She looks especially good in anything that sparkles. We decided not to name her like a fairy, but indeed as a little girl she does look a bit like a tiny, colorful little fairy.

She calls her four parents "uncles" and "aunts." She has also been taught that it is okay to play with the house-elves.

So on to who Melody first is as a growing witch, then. Onward and upward.

Melody is snuggly, affectionate, and cuddly, particularly sweet and easygoing for a small child. She smiles a lot, she is easy to please. She loves physical affection, being held, being rocked and sung to - and she does get plenty of that, I can tell you! She is happiest when in one of our sets of arms. As long as she is close to a loving family, she is what might be called "a greeting card baby." But when she is not close to loving family, she cries a lot. She needs close, affectionate parents and so it has ended up being a lucky thing that we decided to raise her. With an unloving family such as her Muggle relatives, I do not know how she would have fared in her early years.

But with us, at least one person is always around. She is given constant affection, security, and love.

We try to encourage her open, loving affection, as well as her communication and her ability to read emotions in others. She will sometimes pull a parent closer with accidental magic if they move away from her and she isn't ready for them to leave yet. What a feat that is in a toddler!

It may also be a good thing she does not have countless siblings. In a harassed household, she might have come across as a very needy baby. Here, in a wealthy home with four parents and no other children, she doesn't have that problem as a tiny girl.

At the same time, while she will play with her parents, even at this early age she also spends a lot of time playing on her own. She touches everything - even the things she shouldn't - and she loves taking things apart - even when she isn't supposed to be taking them apart! She silently discovers how the world works through physical experimentation.

We are already trying to encourage this in her with her magic. We will show her something, then leave her alone and let her experiment and try to copy it magically on her own. She loves this and can spend silent hours working away at it!

Melody is a curious explorer. This sometimes gets her into trouble. She has a terrible habit of being found in exactly the places she is not supposed to be. She seems to have an especial emphasis on needing to learn to do things by herself. She seems to understand learning best by working by herself on a physical experimentation level.

No one is sure what to do with this in a little girl - it is not exactly polite little girl behavior, any of it - which seems to have mostly just meant that Melody has already internalized herself as a girl who never exactly follows the rules. She takes everything apart, is found exploring places she isn't supposed to know about, and weathers the scoldings that inevitably result in the same silent way she made the trouble in the first place.

The one real good point in this, from a parent's perspective, is again that we are trying to teach her physical experimentation on a magical level. We are encouraging that as much as possible, and it does help. It is already obvious that Melody will not be the rote learning and memorization kind of powerful witch.

But she has good instincts, and she loves using magic to explore and "play." She will, I think, prove to be excellent at mastering physical magic quickly or at discovering new ways of doing things.

There is more to Melody than this, however. She is also positive, buoyant, warm, loving - especially cute and sweet. She gets lots of attention, especially also being a "greeting card baby," and she loves the attention that she gets. She can tantrum when deprived of such attention - we are attempting to ignore her tantrums and cure her of this instinct. She is a bit of a show-off, already knowing she is pretty and talented - an instinct we are also trying to curb.

At the same time: She is spirited and strong-willed, but also warm, affectionate, and open-hearted. A natural leader, she respects everyone and is always honest and warm - refreshingly in a small child, I cannot remember a single occasion where I have ever seen her lie about anything. Not even about the things in the house she has accidentally broken.

She already loves luxury and beauty, for a curious reason - making a good impression on others is important to her. She has natural pride and seems to care a lot about her self image. We try to make sure she has a good one, as we feel that in this area that can only be a positive.

A great bonus: When encouraged - and especially in magic, we are always encouraging her - she works harder than anyone else I have ever met. But not for hard work and accomplishment for its own sake. You have to hit her in that same matter of pride and self image. Step one is to instill in her a strong belief that she is capable of such a self image. Step two is encouraging her to work hard to achieve it. We have already taken these two steps, all four of her parents, hoping to encourage in her an early instinct for hard work and achievement.

This is also helping her physical magical experimentation and instincts. Yes, the part of her that is an experimenter also needs to be encouraged. But the part of her that wants to look talented to the people around her and believes she can achieve that needs to be encouraged just as much so.

Even with our disciplinary tactics, what all this means is that Melody is a bit of a tiny diva but is also a natural and cheerful "leader" girl. She cares a lot about feminine appearance, as well as feminine fanciful luxury. She does sometimes seem to use her magic to make herself look prettier, an amusing quirk in a tiny girl. Under our tutelage, she has been taught to particularly value honesty.

Since we have trained her to work hard and excel in performance, she has internalized herself as a high achieving if also mischievous girl. As her tantrums and showing off are ignored, they seem to become less frequent as time passes. This is a lucky thing, for her accidental magic during tantrums has been particularly explosive.

Overall, she seems to have internalized herself as a fiery, confident, and temperamental young girl, vain but with enormous and positive spirit and great leadership qualities. She is deepened with a great capability for love, cheerful affection, and compassion. She is made more complex by an instinct for silent, curious exploring and experimenting.

There is one more part to her growing personality that is worth discussing, and this is that most of her more tender or vulnerable or troubling emotions she seems not to talk about. On this level, with the things that matter to her or trouble her, she can be surprisingly hard to read. However, she is very secretly emotional on all subjects. We try to shower her with love and compassion in this arena, for she has difficulty expressing more secret feelings and we have understood by now that she needs parents who truly listen, and without ridicule.

Deep down, when she does speak of them, her deepest emotions prove to be all or nothing and incredibly stubborn. We have been trying to teach her emotional self-discipline and the value of moderation - a kind of curbing of extremes - but considering she doesn't like to show, talk about, or admit to such feelings, it is slow going. Such a cheerful, fiery, and friendly leader, it can take a long time for a person to figure out that Melody feels so much more than she lets on.

And so we listen, and we try to encourage her to verbalize how she feels - instead of ridiculing her and encouraging her to lock all those feelings away inside her. A great emphasis is placed on helping her move past her more stoical inner emotions in order to try to voice them. I cannot even imagine how terrible at this she would have been without loving parents. Our Melody is stoical, but as she grows we are trying to teach her how to push past that in order to recognize and admit how she is truly feeling when she needs to.

Particularly internalized emotions can make the walls around her shake in accidental magic and suppressed emotion. I often worry for any alternate selves she may possess in other timelines. As she grows, those tell-tale signs will stop being there, and her talent for repressing her darker emotions will be locked into place - at least, until they finally release themselves in particularly explosive ways.

"If you get upset," we try to tell her, "it is okay to cry and get frustrated. Feelings must come out somehow. It's better than the alternative."

And so she is slowly learning how to quietly and in a troubled way voice bad emotions… instead of repressing them…

But I have the feeling it will always take a long time to break past Melody's fearless, warm, friendly, and daringly curious leadership walls.

* * *

 _Perenelle Flamel's Diary_

I am keeping a diary of my daughter as she grows into a child - all her baby milestones, how she grows and changes in learning and memory. I am an experimenter first and foremost, as an alchemist, and also as a mother I want to show how the baby girl I wanted so badly grows and changes.

This time I am writing at the time of her second birthday.

Melody did a lot of changing leading up to this. It all started with a lot of tantrums and a paralyzing, crying fear of loud noises. She had nap times, and formed warm milk and story and bath time bedtime routines with us.

It was difficult because we got her at the hardest part of her toddler years. It is a lucky thing there were four of us, and we were so loving and patient. Right away we had to start disciplining her against spurts of angry accidental magic and intentional defiance. Ignoring her tantrums and, past a certain point, her screams for attention also had to be started right away.

But it wasn't all bad. She dropped the morning nap and by now only has one nap time a day, in addition to her bedtime. She formed a love for doing things by herself, even when she did them wrong - putting on the wrong shoes, trying to brush her hair herself - which ended up being rather adorable. Potty training came rather quickly, as did big kid clothes.

In the beginning, she did know words but she mostly babbled. We had to teach her, through her screeching, about inside versus outside voices. We had to deal with her picky eating. She formed security blankets and stuffed animals, and for a long time she still used a pacifier.

Her accidental magic saved her from things like falls, but we had to specialty-lock all the cupboard and doors against accidental poisoning.

She loved bath-time and we had a tiny pool for her that she played around in out in the back garden. Soon enough she was a climber, she became surer on her feet, and she loved playing hide and seek. At the same time, she still liked being carried, or walking hand in hand with her parents - we took her on long walks in the gardens or around her homes - and she became fast friends with all four of us, very attached as she grew old enough to understand who we were.

She moved fast into a four-poster purple big kid bed, in her gold-laden wizarding Paris themed bedroom that moved magically with us. She also formed a growing vocabulary and habit for talking.

She went through a phase where she hated going to bed, and woke everyone else in the house up at dawn. She went through a phase of overwhelmed crying fits.

At the same time, there was again good. We loved playtime with her, putting on magical puppet shows and gifting her with magical, fanciful doll houses. We played ball with her and bought her a tiny toy broomstick. She began trying to "help" us with whatever we were working on around the house. She wasn't any help at all, but she was very cute while she was trying.

And then she took to running and climbing staircases. We had to discipline her against doing things like hitting or shoving. She became a very active toddler. This period is actually the "terrible twos" period for any child, so we read. We tried to raise her to be a good girl - a disciplined child.

We comforted and soothed nightmares with fanciful displays of magic and Dream-healing treatments. We taught her lessons in sharing, even if it was just with us and the elves, and lessons in table manners at our big dining room tables. She quickly formed a kind of confident willfulness, a burgeoning independence and series of demands. It was complicated - we had to find complex ways of disciplining that and encouraging it at the same time. It was around this period that she even began trying new foods.

The more independently she could play, the more we let her. We bought her toy wands to play pretend with, dolls to manipulate, tiny toy flying sets (from brooms to carpets), musical toys, and countless books that we read to her. We tried to instill in her a love of stories and reading.

In language, she mastered two and four word sentences, followed by simple songs, an ability to follow simple instructions, use of pronouns, and recognizing things by words. She took to often repeating words she heard in conversation - on amusing occasions, the inappropriate ones and the oaths included.

By the time of this writing, she can pull toys behind her, carry things while she walks, can run, and moves and talks and dresses and sleeps more like a child and less like a toddler. She even uses the toilet like a child. She has completely given up her pacifier.

We have just recently bought her a tricycle and a regular kid's broom, and she is practicing on those. In flying, she is a complete and breath-taking natural, graceful and small and quick. We are also giving her swimming lessons on our private grounds. Her accidental and even purposeful magic is already quite pronounced.

We have taken countless individual and family photos both, many of them including all five of us and all of them moving in the wizarding way.

On her second birthday, Melody is a full-on young child wearing her heart on her sleeve. Everything about her is open and dramatic, and we're trying to learn not to placate her at the very first sign of sniffling. The little thing is willful and fiery and primadonna diva enough as it is!

We've all had different ways of interacting with and dealing with the first several months of Melody's toddler years.

Her Uncle Garrick is the calm, matter of fact, and sarcastic one full of wild-eyed stories. Her Uncle Nicolas is bright, cheerful, loving, and hopelessly never the bad guy. Both men are also hopelessly fond of her, Garrick Ollivander unwilling to admit Melody has him wrapped around her little finger. They are supportive, Nicolas with an endless stream of delighted patience and Garrick pretending at distance and exasperation. They are the ones she turns to when she needs something, or when she is feeling vulnerable, and I privately envy them.

Her Aunt Sybil is dry, fond of Melody, and prone to highly eccentric declarations, but she is also surprisingly good at stern discipline. I am loving but dignified and reserved, so together her Aunt Sybil and her Aunt Perenelle are actually the ones to watch out for. I am frigid and fearsome when I am displeased, but her Aunt Sybil can think of some very creative and crafty punishments that teach good life lessons while letting the lessons do our work for us.

It has been a hard several months, but she has come out intact from our mistakes a relatively healthy, loved, and good-spirited little girl. I believe the worst in terms of toddler punishment may in fact be behind us.

And as I said, now she is turning two!

* * *

Melody got early visits to each and every office or study of her parents in their homes.

Nicolas and Perenelle would lift her up into the air and show her their alchemy lab tables. She was taught to identify bubbling potions and plant and creature potion ingredients, was shown vials and vats full of elements like dragon's blood, was handed crystals and little insects caught in resin, learned her way around a metallic alchemy lab full of old steam-powered instruments.

And she was shown, she with a kind of wonder, the materials and treatments and ointments that came out at the end, smooth and rippling colorful liquid out of a long metal tube connected to the lab table. She watched as it fell into a bin below, for selling and material use.

Sybil would take her into her room full of poufs and chairs, always warm with a heavily perfumed fire that made Melody feel sleepy. Sometimes Sybil would let her fall asleep. Melody would have strange, vivid, symbolic dreams and she and Sybil would try to analyze them together.

Other times, Sybil showed her things like tea leaf construction, or star chart studies and algorithms, or would teach her how to channel her magic into scrying crystals and try to make sense of the shadowy shapes she saw within.

Garrick took her into the place where he constructed wands. He would show her how he would close his eyes and put his hands over his materials. He could channel something from the materials - then his eyes would fly open and he would know magically which wands he wanted to build. He showed her how he measured and carved out wood, fitted magical creature part cores neatly inside.

"Someday," he said, "you can help me collect these ingredients on my travels with me." He beamed, his eyes gleaming in excitement, and Melody thought even as a little girl that this sounded like a terrific adventure.

She was let walk around his dusty little office full of wand boxes, brushing her hands against the dust and feeling the secret, silent tingle of heavy magic.

One thing she was taught very early on was what magic felt like - whether it was through these visits or through Dream-healing treatments. As she noticed it, that pleasant tingling sensation that meant magic became ever keener to her.

She didn't understand much of it yet, but they let her play with little things in their labs or offices under supervision. These became some of her earliest foundational memories.

Meanwhile, they each started her on little hobbies. The Flamels encouraged an interest in artistic crafts. They often had story times involving popular and famous plays. They showed her records and radios featuring wizarding music of all kinds and eccentric varieties. Melody learned that wizards wore a blend of ancient and modern clothes and robes, and that their music usually featured new sounds with old instruments. A kind of breathy gentleness in music characterized her earliest childhood memories.

One of her earliest big memories involved a joint trip to wizarding Paris and wizarding Egypt. She remembered old cobblestone paths with colorful crystalline storefronts filled with flowers and fantastical baked treats. She remembered the dark underground dust of old wizarding Egyptian tombs, their carvings and cobwebs, shadows and secrets. The Flamels tried to teach her how to say the basics of what she wanted in both French and Arabic.

Sybil took her star-gazing out in the fields surrounding their houses at night. They would go out with magically ever-warm mugs of pumpkin juice or hot cocoa, lay down in fields, and point out stars to each other. Sybil would teach her about cosmic astronomical placement and would show her constellations.

Sybil also let her "help" in her own Potions laboratory. "Potions is a bit like cooking - mixing ingredients together in new and creative ways for a set result," she would say. And she would show Melody the basics of potion-brewing, hoisting her up and letting her throw ingredients in the cauldron.

Sybil also used Dream-healing to help Melody get to sleep every night. The stone carving basin, the Pensieve full of swirling silvery memories, would be set up, a silencing spell would be placed outside the room, and then Sybil would show her beautiful images and sounds floating out of the Pensieve. Melody would feel that tingle of magic, and then slowly and warmly fall asleep in her big Parisian purple and gold bedroom lit with candles or fairy lights.

Garrick would regale her with fabulous tales of harrowing escapades and travels to find new wand-parts. It was always fun when Uncle Garrick came back from a long trip, because he would be brim-full of exciting stories to tell her. He also impressed her with little "inner mind magic trips."

He would look into her eyes - and then all of a sudden she would be standing with him in a room inside her own mind. He showed her how to walk through the halls and access memories in different rooms, how to remember countless things better, how to decorate and arrange her inner mind in any way she pleased. And he taught her how to clear out her frontal mind room in the first step to Occlumency.

There was even more to Melody's early childhood than this. She would be regaled with ancient stories of her wizarding Wiccan Pagan religion. She was taught early on a belief in alternate relationships, alternate races, and all kinds of love. She was taught how to light candles in front of an altar, decorate it with branches, and pray to the God and Goddess before it. She was taught that powerful wizards and witches were seen as a kind of minor god, and she loved tales of the first wand-makers and Druids.

She had two homes with two sets of grounds, and her family regularly moved from one to the other. The Potter Manor was a rustic place with high mahogany ceilings and great stone fireplaces and warm colors. Out on the grounds was a small field for flying, a broom shed, and then a forest. The Flamel Chateaux was sophisticated and cultured, European in style, with lots of lovely silk and gold trimmings in fantastical colors. Out back was a series of interconnecting, hedged-in gardens and a big stone fountain in the center.

Slowly, Melody explored more and more of her homes and their grounds. Her goal was eventual complete independence in these places - to know them in and out and be able to go anywhere all on her own.

Her purple and gold wizarding Parisian bedroom with its four poster bed was slowly filled with all the fantastical things she was gifted as a little girl. The colorful walls were painted with moving decals, and a big indoor swing was placed in the center of the bedroom. When they moved houses, all of her bedroom was sucked up inside a little box and then spat back out at a bedroom in the other house. The house-elves always moved with them, and they were some of tiny Melody's closest friends, always delighted and patient with her.

Melody was slowly forming her own fantastical, private little world.

* * *

The family celebrated Winter Solstice together over a series of days. That first year was all about establishing family traditions.

Their first ritual was a Candlelight Circle. The family gathered around the dining table, Melody trying not to squirm. An unlit new red taper candle in a candleholder was placed before each family member, then a larger pillar candle in a candleholder to represent the family as a whole and the Solstice Sun.

One of Melody's parents would begin an old story about Winter Solstice, how it had been celebrated across wizarding time, and its connection to modern Christmas celebrations. Then they would talk about attuning themselves to the ways of the ancestors and Nature.

The lights were extinguished. There were a few moments of silence. Then the central candle was lit with a brief wish for a blessing, followed by the lighting of all the other candles. The family would finish by sitting around the dark, candle-lit, warm table and singing songs together.

Their second ritual was a Yule Log. An oak log decorated with red ribbons and holly leaves was put in the fireplace. An old story would be told by one parent about the Oak King and the Holly King from sacred Celtic mythology - the same mythology that decided Hogwarts being built on ancient Celtic ground. There were another few moments of darkness and silence. Then the Yule Log was lit. As it burned, everyone took turns throwing dried holly sprigs into the fire and saying farewell to the old calendar year. The burning bonfire in the fireplace always smelled wonderful, and the Potter Manor was perfect for it.

Once more, the family would sing old songs gathering around the fire together as the wonderful-smelling Yule Log burned.

Of course, there would always be a massive Yule tree. They would decorate the tree with candles, red ribbons, shimmering tinsel, and magically non-popping golden bubbles. One of their favorite traditions was to litter crackers among the leaves to be popped on what might be called Christmas Day. Clouds of blue smoke erupted from the crackers and all sorts of fantastical things came out, from silly hats to live animals. Sometimes they hired tiny, colorful fairies to decorate their tree as lights during the season. Melody loved talking to the fairies, borrowing their tiny, colorful silk books.

In general, Melody had an early childhood fascination with any book she didn't immediately understood - from runic texts to fairy books, monster books, and books written with invisible ink. She loved unicorn horns, too, and colorful ink, and any kind of potion ingredient that glittered. She could be endlessly fascinated by the look of the gold her alchemist parents could produce - not even understanding or caring about its true value. She already knew she looked best in rich, jewel-like shades. Sometimes she had conversations about fashion with her mirror.

On what was often called Christmas Day, while the house-elves made the feast, Melody's family sat around the fire and opened gifts. Melody's parents told Solstice Stories, usually old favorites. Some of them were personal family and ancestor stories, and Melody was told on these occasions stories of her own birth parents while they were alive as well. It was on these occasions that she was always handed her first precious moving photographs of her parents, that she learned their names, that she learned they had died.

This was all she understood as a little girl, the most that they told her. She never read the Daily Prophet that came by owl every morning. She knew that there was a Ministry of Magic, that there were other wizarding countries, but she understood very little about them.

The gifts were always placed in a big cauldron, and they were not usually the kinds of gifts most people thought of, the kind she got in everyday life or on her birthdays. Much more often, they were agate and quartz crystals, animal figurines and exotic seashells, candles, bells, and sweets. The wrapping paper always moved and shimmered with real, colorful figures.

At one point during every Christmas Day, Uncle Albus would Floo in using the main fireplace. Uncle Albus was the fun one, so Melody would fly forward and squeal in delight as he lifted her up beaming. He would tell her an entire new kind of interesting stories, the kind she didn't usually hear, and he would gift her with eccentric little pieces of clothing and with moving picture books about fascinating and rare magical artifacts. He always wanted to hear all about how she was getting on. He would ask her about the latest things she had learned from her parents, and add in little teaching details himself. Uncle Albus and Uncle Nicolas would play wizard's chess and talk alchemy.

Samhain, or Halloween, was a different matter. Melody would get to bob for apples, and she would do crafts like make door wreaths or jack-o-lanterns filled with candles with her parents. One thing they would always do is take her on Samhain afternoon to a wizarding bat retreat, so she could walk among the dark caverns full of dripping water and softly fluttering bats. Another thing they would always do is hire dancing skeletons to accompany their main nighttime Samhain feast with the bobbing for apples. Baking pumpkin and pumpkin juice and wizarding-themed sweets were always included at these feasts. Butterbeer, elderflower wine, and Firewhiskey were added for the adults. Ghost and ghoul stories, tales of dark magical creatures, were always prevalent.

"Darkness is a part of ancient history. We all used to be rather Dark," Uncle Nicolas admitted. "The modern Dark just hasn't let go of the past - nor of all their resentment over all the wizarding children who died during the witch hunts, nor of their distrust of Muggles who used to despise wizards so much. Add in their love for the Old Ways, and you have the Dark in a nutshell.

"The problem is, they use all this to justify killing innocent people. This explains some of our greatest rebels and uprisers."

Valentine's Day was a different matter. Aunt Sybil, Uncle Garrick, and Melody would spend all morning crafting and baking gifts for Nicolas and Perenelle. Then Nicolas and Perenelle would sit around and have story time, smiling at each other full of fond romantic memories.

Finally, the family would go out onto the still-icy pond on the grounds, the same one Melody learned to swim in during the summertime - and they would all go ice skating together. Ice skating and baking and romance became indelibly imprinted in Melody's mind as all going hand in hand. She began dreaming of and imagining her own romance, or romances, that would last hundreds of years when she herself learned alchemy. She didn't mind if it was a girl or a boy, one person or more than one, but she wanted that - wanted it so badly.

Melody's second birthday was on July 31st, and the only person there besides her four parents was again Uncle Albus Dumbledore. For her birthday, her family established yet another tradition and had a fantastical tea and garden party out on the grounds.

There was a sweets shoppe them, a woodland owl theme, a donuts and daisies theme, and an Alice in Wonderland garden inspired theme with real fairies again as lights - all going hand in hand.

As Melody ran shrieking and laughing around the splendor, long curls and colorful dress in place - she had somehow found a way to be chased by the house-elves, the garden gnomes, and the fairies all at the same time - the five adults smiled fondly and watched her.

"She really has adjusted quite well, hasn't she?" Dumbledore said quietly, watching Melody closely. "I was afraid she would adjust poorly to being a girl…"

"Well, she won't even remember being a boy, will she?" said Sybil rhetorically. "We've already told her, in addition to her parents and that they've passed, about Shifting and that she used to be a boy… It's like alternate relationships and our special kind of spirituality for her. She's growing up with it, so she's just accepted it as a part of our world."

"She is really quite a marvelously adaptable young girl," said Nicolas, pleased. "She seems to love it here -"

"Safe and enclosed and protected," said Garrick quietly, for he knew the real point to Albus Dumbledore.

"I am glad she is with us. And loved. The more I learn about that aunt of hers, the less I trust her," said Perenelle stiffly, displeased.

"Yes," said Albus, watching Melody play. "How different her life might have been…

"But no. She is a wonderfully spirited young girl, and changed forever. This is who she is now.

"Though I do wonder what will happen as she grows older… and as she starts to want to know what the world and people her own age look like outside this enchanted little place…"


	3. New Looks, Imaginary Friends, and Tutors

Chapter Three: New Looks, Imaginary Friends, and Tutors

 _Garrick Ollivander's Diary_

This time I am writing at three years old - a few weeks after Melody's third birthday.

We have started slowly letting people we know come to visit our house. Curiously, Melody is very quiet and reserved in public. She needs to feel secure before showing her playfulness, her deep feelings, or her deep loyalties.

Once, she was apparently playing too loudly and one of Nicolas's friends spoke sharply to her. She sat stoically in a corner without moving for the rest of the visit, and when the stranger left, toddler Melody began crying inconsolably. We knew she was upset, though, because in a feat of accidental magic, all the plants around her had begun wilting and dying as she'd sat in the corner.

She seems quite determined to be reserved around those she doesn't trust and know well. So she is warm and proud and a leader, but she also carries a kind of innate reserve in public that adds to her stoical nature.

Determined to capitalize on this, her aunts have begun teaching her how to be a graceful, warm, proud reserved young woman, with great class, composure and etiquette. These lessons have started early. We are trying to take her quiet into becoming a good upper-class "hostess." Only with those close to her, it is beginning to happen, does she show loyalty and playfulness.

In general, whenever families come over, she is hesitant around adults and bigger or more aggressive children. She avoids them - once a bully tried to invade her space and she even used her magic to push him away. She becomes very shy and stoical around strange, big adults. In child playmates, she likes soft-spoken, gentle people and often plays with smaller kids.

Although fairly reserved in public, at home alone with us she is loud, boisterous, uninhibited, and energetic. She can be giggly, expressive, even silly. She just doesn't seem good at showing this to people she doesn't know well. As she grows, she seems to be becoming the "shy or reserved until you become her friend" sort of person. Her primadonna toddler years are slowly leaving her behind. She already dislikes aggression and violence in playmates, even with much confidence detests it.

As she is a girl, her love of gentle kindness is encouraged and cemented, as is her "quiet until you get to know her, big sweater, sweet inner nature" personality. At the same time, she is still quietly warm and a good leader, stoical but with passions underneath the surface. More of her older personality is starting to shine through, with growth and discipline, at long last.

On the note of appearance, she has started wearing big sweaters and sweater dresses in Winter shades - along with dark pants to hide the knobby, dimpled knees she already doesn't like. She has started tying her black curls back in a low, loose ponytail behind her head, with a blunt fringe to cover the forehead scar she is self conscious of. At about three years old, she was taken to her first eye appointment and was prescribed glasses. We chose fashionable big square dark frames that, like her curls, broaden her thin face, compliment her coloring, and highlight her almond-shaped bright green eyes and high cheekbones.

She fiddles with her glasses in the mirror uncertainly a lot, but she is actually turning out to be in her own way rather a pretty girl.

There is more to Melody's personal growth than this, however. She has begun asking countless questions at all hours of the day - an activity we try to encourage, even when it gets frustrating. We want her to be intellectually curious. She seems to love the intellectual, knowledge aspects of learning - if not their discipline and rote counterparts - and we try to encourage this by indulging in her fascination with reading to her big books of information. She likes cosmic, big, universal ideas but can sloppily forget the rather boring details.

Direct and blunt, she will have to be taught tact and that other people have sensitive feelings - adults included. She once told a particularly wealthy old friend of Perenelle's who was visiting, out loud to her face, that her hat looked like a bird had just built a nest inside it and the pink frills on her dress were stupid. "You should dress better," Melody finished matter of factly in her tiny girl's voice.

Red-faced and upset, needless to say the woman left in a huff.

So we have been trying to teach her… sensitivity for feelings and, well… _tact_. "Sometimes," we say, "being honest but also kind gets better results." She is trying to learn tact, but only on the surface and only reluctantly.

More happily, Melody loves unorthodox ideas such as those put forward by her parents, and is consuming theoretical and eccentric and artistic magic easily like a sponge. Our ideals are becoming important and impassioned to her as well. She has also started asking lots of questions about religion and languages.

She is also idealistic. Nothing can bring on a tantrum faster than a little white lie or a broken promise from one of her parents. Melody has an incredibly strong faith in those she loves, and any kind of disappointment in that arena can eat away at her.

On a more amusing and uncomfortable note, Melody has been found, well, playing with herself as a small child like many toddlers do. She's too young to really have any sense of embarrassment over being caught out. On the contrary, she always comes across as rather matter of fact.

Her emotions are so vivid and intense that if she wants something or someone, she can be incredibly stubborn and no substitute will be accepted - unless we force her to accept a substitute, as we sometimes have to. She is in that phase where she openly either loves or hates everything. She went through a possessive phase where she did not want to be separated from her parents, not even for a short time - clingy and jealous, she wanted each of us "all to herself." The possessiveness for a while extended even to her toys, which she took to carrying around with her.

The playing with herself is understood as part of a young child and is ignored. Her emotional intensity is already set in stone, as is her stoical stubbornness, but we are trying to work on abating her frowning possessiveness. "People are allowed to be their own people with their own choices," we tell her, and she tries to accept this with difficulty.

In short, we are also trying to work on the "pulling people closer" part of her magic.

I cannot wait to see how she continues to change as she gets older!

* * *

 _Perenelle Flamel's Diary_

I now write just a few weeks after Melody's third birthday.

She still has her afternoon nap. She has started to have a better realization of time and space, and of the world and people outside of her home. She has started asking why she never sees the outside, but she isn't pushy or insistent yet - just curious. We also still haven't told her the full details of her past.

We have started feeding her more normal, healthy big-kid foods. Happily, actual conversations between child and parents have started, and we are trying to build her vocabulary and introduce her to as many new intellectual ideas as possible. She talks to each of us about our chosen fields and hobbies. Sybil asks her thoughtfully to articulate her opinions on things. Nicolas teaches her things and dotes over her. I have very adult conversations with her about things like fashion and household magic. Garrick talks about current events and opinions, encouraging debate and stories with wild, excited eyes.

She has started speaking full sentences, needless to say. She has taken a great liking to blocks, puzzles, and overall clutter that litters itself around the house.

She went through a phase of irrational fears and phobias of so many random things. As a child, she has begun testing her limits and we have had to learn to say the word "no" - a lot. Her tantrums continue to be ignored.

In toys, we have bought her big toys to push or ride, wind-up and jack-in-the-box toys, play sets and blocks that can be handled and stacked, puzzles, dress-up clothes, puppets, and art supplies. She also has clay, sand, little musical toys, and books. We have begun taking her places outside the grounds, little Muggle world visits such as the zoo or Blackpool.

A curious thing happened at the zoo. We discovered that Melody can, of all things, speak to snakes - she began hissing quite pleasantly to a snake in one of the tanks. We took her home and, after some discussion, decided the idea of Melody being naturally evil is silly. So we have begun showing her moving snake photos, trying to get her to translate snake speak into English and copying the language down into a little leather-bound journal as a kind of translational text. We have also taught her not to go talking about her Parseltongue to just anybody.

So she has strong magic and magic sensing abilities, alongside Parseltongue and, Sybil believes, possibly symbolic Dream-seeing as she gets older. What a powerful girl!

We are starting to let Melody make independent decisions. She has begun to insist on independent activities. She asks constant questions, why's, and what's that's, and she can't sit still for very long. A bizarre thing we have had to teach her not to do is bite people.

Melody has begun playing strong games of make-believe and having lots of imaginary friends. She is also, peculiarly, we believe beginning to copy things from the parents she is growing up with.

She has my dignity and reserve, Nicolas's penchant for bright interest, Garrick's streak of wild-eyed and grinning adventure, and Sybil's penchant for proud and eccentric statements. She is her own person, but a bit of each of us is forming inside her.

We believe she is turning out to be ambidextrous. Around this time she finally mastered speech and complete, full sentences. At this same time, time-outs began. And we have begun teaching her French and Arabic, so that she will have both early and all of her life.

In more toys, we began buying her puzzles with knobbed handles, lock boxes and latch boards, and dress-up dolls that needed buttoning and lacing. We helped her try to make different little toys out of balls of yarn and string. She took a liking to repetitive motions, as she tried out and began to get a sense of her world.

We are by now reading every day with her - in a sense, "pre-reading" for her. We learned to pick our battles when it came to a three year old. She has begun learning her social skills from adults and not from children. This has the effect of making her seem older and rather more precocious than her age - adding to her love of our eccentric hobbies. She is friendly, but odd and precocious, a bit nerdy. It is an unintended side effect and we love her just the way that she is. Melody turning out to be a bit unusual is largely inevitable. She has also begun "helping" us more in-depth - fetching the correct magical things for us, learning things. She has become an expert at smoothly predicting exactly what we will need next when caught in the middle of a project.

She came to be able to stack things easier and concentrate on play for longer at a time. She disliked being interrupted, so we took to warning her five minutes ahead of a transition. She has a better sense of time now, so this works. In addition to her clutter, there has been mess she has had to be punished for - books and toys strewn everywhere and left, things removed from shelves and drawers, drawings on walls, spilled juice, teared paper, flung clothes.

Needless to say, I'll be happy if we can just manage to teach her to be neat.

We have been trying to teach her to share. It was also around this time that we as parents took turns spending nights away out by ourselves. It was at this time that Melody's love for colorful wizarding bubble baths started.

In addition to ignoring tantrums, now we had to ignore whining. Each of us learned our own individual discipline strategies. Nicolas talked over her and gave time-outs. Sybil made her clean up and apologize for whatever mess she had made. Garrick and I are better at lectures and scolding, neither of us having any time for whining or tears.

Melody began having an eye and ear for sensory details, and went through the independent struggle of learning how to do things like get dressed on her own. Funny and charming, she began putting weird words together, and she also began giving the "no" word - to us! We began teaching her how to scribble, draw, and color with ink and crayons. She often crawled into bed to sleep with one of us at night. We each provide a different kind of comfort - Garrick soothing bedtime stories in a deep voice, Sybil little displays of Dream-healing and sleep magic, Nicolas and I comfortable late night conversations in the dark with Melody warm between us.

In fun physical games, we began teaching her things like follow the leader, catch, and dance. Her bedtime routine began shortening as she fell asleep at night more on her own with the Pensieve. We taught her alliteration, wordplay, and rhyming games. Her imagination and pretending really began to build around this time. She began playing in the house or the garden more independently, sometimes under the supervision of elves. She got increased swim time in the pond on the grounds, more swimming independently, and we began teaching her upper-class wizarding elegance, etiquette, social graces, and manners.

She will be a classy girl.

To allay her budding fear of the dark and of nightmares and night terrors, we began telling her wizarding fairy tales at night. She showed an increased interest in wizarding treats and sweets. We taught her how to count.

She also began bed-wetting, an increasing series of bossiness and demands, and a love for toddler age humor. Silly faces, slapstick, and strange sounds can make her squeal with delighted laughter. We have been keeping track of her growing height, though she still is and probably always will be small. She began getting her wizarding swears from us, deciding how she wanted to dress on her own - and we have been teaching her wizarding game, from Wizard's Chess to Exploding Snap and Gobstones.

She has begun doing tea parties with her dolls. She is getting better at kid's broom flying and trike riding. She has started making collections of little nature things she finds on her own on the grounds. We have been teaching her color-learning games.

She loves story time, and has been using the "love" and "hate" words with almost alarming frequency. She seems determined to finally decide the things she likes.

Dumbledore has been coming over more often as the "fun uncle" - I think she gets some of her cheerful, smiling airiness and intellectual determination from him. By now, Melody Potter's world is fairly set.

* * *

Melody came to actually start helping and learning with each of her parents in their offices. This led to a good deal of intellectual eccentricity, but also a wealth and breadth of power and knowledge. Her first order of business was to learn from her parents how their jobs and their hobbies actually worked.

This was the time when she began soaking in information like a sponge.

She began taking an active interest in their hobbies, and also in stories of her own budding Wiccan Pagan religion, and in the intellectual and artistic discussions she had with her parents. Slowly, she began internalizing all of these things as important.

She began exploring and learning more about the intricacies of her homes and their grounds on her own. She had countless imaginary friends - and this was the time that she finally learned that house elves were helpers, with magic, as well as being friends. The elves loved her, mostly because she was nice to them she felt.

* * *

All four parents sat in front of the nervous middle-aged man, square and pale with a toupee, in a black cloak before them. He shifted in his seat there in the vast sitting room hall of the chateaux, everything around him empty.

"… Yes," said Perenelle, reserved. "You will do as a childhood scholarly tutor for our daughter.

"Can you start immediately?"

* * *

Author's Note: I'm thinking one or two more childhood chapters and I'm done. Now things start going faster.


End file.
